Witness for the Prosecution
by Sweet September Storm
Summary: Like it or not, she had come to tell what she had seen that awful night. To testify. Testify - the word had a vaguely biblical tang. Leah wondered if God would smite her before or after she left the witness stand. One life for another, perhaps? It would be the most decent thing she had done in a long time. Based on Agatha Christie's short story Witness for the Prosecution.


**Witness for the Prosecution**

* * *

Article 130 of the Penal Code of New York State

S 130.16: _Sex offenses; corroboration._

"_A person shall not be convicted of any offense defined in this article of which lack of consent is an element but results solely from incapacity to consent because of the victim's mental defect, or mental incapacity, or an attempt to commit the same, solely on the testimony of the victim, unsupported by other evidence."_

* * *

Nobody could keep a secret in this place. Silence was the only safety. If you spoke, even in a whisper, the polished marble and mahogany seized your words and sent them crashing into the walls, the domed atrium ceiling, the tiled floors and the listening ears of an ever-present lawyer. Of which there were many at the moment. The judge had just called a recess.

Leah sighed and dropped her chin into her hand. Who was she kidding? Of course she would talk. After all, that was why she had come. To talk. To tell what she had seen that awful night. To testify. _Testify._ The word had a vaguely biblical tang, and the taste was not comforting. She wondered if God would smite her before or after she left the witness stand. _At least let it be nice and quick. A lightning bolt'll work if you have any up there._

She kicked her heels against the leg of the wooden bench and tugged at the hem of her skirt with one hand. It was charcoal gray, a safe choice for the courtroom. Gray skirt, pink blouse, light gray blazer, black pumps and black stockings. Hair pulled into a French twist, small diamond studs in ears, nose ring removed, just a touch of lipstick. Conservative enough to keep from offending a judge, but not too plain to keep the jury from remembering her. It was Leah's best impression of Marlene Dietrich from _Witness for the Prosecution_. She prayed it would have the same affect.

Not that anyone would appreciate the allusion. Nor should they, if everything went as planned. She would place her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help her God. She would sit and face the courtroom, packed as it was with family, friends and perfect strangers. She would answer Mertzmann's questions in a clear and passionate voice. She would describe to everyone exactly what had happened to Anje. The jury would be convinced. Robbie would go to jail. Her mother would disown her. If he could see her from whatever corner of hell he had been assigned to, her father would surely disapprove. But that didn't bother her anymore. Leah was heading off to college soon and leaving the crumbling remains of what had once passed as a family far behind. Even the memory of her father's wrath couldn't touch her at St. Lawrence.

A wave of something that felt suspiciously like guilt racked her for a moment at the thought of her family. Leah shook her head to dispel it. _Robbie made his choice three months ago. Mom made her choice when she sided with him_. Leah reflected on her own decision, on how it had arrived on the paper-thin edge of an envelope the week before—an envelope that contained her ticket to a free future. Inside that envelope was a letter from St. Lawrence University.

"_Dear Ms. Morrow, we are pleased to extend an offer of admission for the fall semester…" _

As soon as Leah read those fateful words, her decision was made. She called Mertzmann's office the very next day.

_I've made my choice, and I'm damn well sticking to it,_ she told herself._ This is the right thing to do._

"Mertzmann just told me that you're testifying."

Leah looked up.

"He says I'm supposed to talk to you."

It was Anje. Her voice was dead, her hair had a greasy sheen and her clothes were rumpled from sitting in the courtroom for so long. Only her eyes seemed to have any life in them. Leah was amazed how much disdain Anje could express in a single, sullen gaze.

"Yes. I'm testifying."

Anje folded her arms and looked away. The atrium was abuzz with sharp-suited lawyers and harried clerks hurrying to get coffee to their respective bosses, teary-eyed mothers, silent bailiffs and a smattering of hardhearted journalists looking to snap a shot of the next O.J. Simpson. It looked to Leah as though every judge in the building had called a recess at the same time. She wondered if they had somehow managed to sync their bladders.

"Do you want to sit?" Leah asked, unsettled by Anje's rigidity. She slid to the end of the bench and patted the seat beside her. Anje sat without a word, still watching the strangers milling around the atrium. "Anje?"

"What?"

"Are you—?" She stopped herself just in time. Of course Anje was not _okay._ It was a criminally insensitive word, okay. Anje was not even remotely okay. Nothing about this situation was okay. "It's been awhile," she said instead.

"Yeah."

"I've…missed you."

"Two months, twenty-nine days, three hours and seven minutes. Give or take. You couldn't've missed me quite that long."

There was new bitterness in her voice that Leah wasn't sure she understood, and she was scared to ask about it. Thankfully, her escape route had just walked into view. Leah plastered on a smile and nudged Anje in the ribs as she nodded to the drinking fountain across the atrium. "So—Mertzmann, huh? He's that lawyer from the billboards, isn't he?"

Anje grimaced but did not pull away. "Yeah."

"His commercials are lousy."

"I know."

"Always sounded like a bit slimy to me."

"I guess."

"He knows how to dress, I'll give him that," Leah said. It was true. Christian Mertzmann pulled off his three-piece suit, orange silk necktie and neatly trimmed sideburns with aplomb. He even walked with a swagger. _Cocky _had been Leah's first impression. _Competent _had been her second. _Wicked expensive_ had been her third. She wondered how Mr. and Mrs. de Witte had managed to afford him. Maybe it was true, as Anje had told her once before, that her dad's rich great-aunt in Holland had finally decided to take notice of her grandnephew and come to his family's aid. Leah hoped that was what had happened.

"Maybe. He's still a shark."

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't…doesn't…believe me."

"What? Why not?"

Anje shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"It'll be all right, Anj. He knows what he's doing."

Anje gave her a sharp look and said nothing.

Leah felt her stomach clench. "He _does_, right?"

"Haven't you been watching?"

"I've…uh, no. A little. Not the whole thing." Leah tugged at her skirt again, embarrassed.

"Oh? Busy with college plans or something?"

Leah looked up, expecting a sneer. But Anje's expression was surprisingly sincere. "Yeah. I mean, sort of. Still working out the details."

"Are you going to Cornell?"

"No."

"That's it? Just _no_?" Anje scoffed. "You've been planning for Cornell since we were in sixth grade."

Leah felt her face darken. "If I went to Cornell I'd have to live at home."

"Oh."

Silence between them stretched thick and itchy for a minute, chafing like a shrunken wool sweater. Neither looked at the other. Leah found herself engrossed in the sight of a nearby paralegal in an ill-fitting suit struggling to organize her armful of folders as she click-clacked her way after a pair of clerks. At last Anje cleared her throat and asked if Leah had any other plans.

Leah lifted one shoulder and let it fall, eyes still fixed on the clerk. "I'm going to St. Lawrence University. It got my letter last week."

"Huh."

"It's a good school."

"It's in Potsdam, right?" Anje asked.

"Canton."

"That's pretty far away."

"Yeah, it's a drive." _After what happens today, it can't be far enough,_ Leah thought to herself_. _"What about you?"

Anje frowned. "I haven't decided yet."

"No RIT?"

"I don't know if I want to go to college."

Leah bit off the _why not?_ before it could leave her tongue. She knew exactly why Anje feared immersing herself in a strange atmosphere filled with strange people, and she couldn't blame her. "That's…cool." It was the weakest, most innocuous word she could think of, and it was a total lie. Both she and Anje knew that it was not cool at all.

Anje pushed a snarled strand of hair out of her face, and Leah found herself wondering how long it had been since Anje had showered. She had once been so conscientious about her appearance. But then again, she had also once been comfortable sleeping over at Leah's house for days at a time without worrying about who might break into the bathroom and attack her while she was showering. After her father had died, Leah had thought that danger had left her house for good. She had had no reason to warn her friend. Robbie had shocked them all.

"Sure it is."

"Hey, no college, no debt," Leah tried.

"Of course. And I _have_ wanted to work at the diner for the rest of my life, so it looks like a win-win for me." The bitterness was back.

"Anje, don't do that," Leah said.

"Do what?"

"You don't have to work at the diner for the rest of your life. You know you still have options. You could—"

"I could what? Get _married_? Start a family?"

"I mean…"

Anje would not let her finish. "That's what women do when they don't go to school, isn't it? Ring and white dress, bun in the oven, strollers and cradles and sleepless nights, then pack a lunch for the kiddies when they're older, see them to the bus stop, do the dishes, vacuum the rugs and have dinner on the table when daddy gets home. Right? That's what I'd be doing for the rest of my life?"

"Anje…"

"Except that won't work for me, remember?" She pulled her lips back into a mirthless smile that showed her teeth. "I'm damaged goods. Men don't want women who someone else has already broken."

"Anje, you're not broken," Leah said softly.

"I'm not?" Her face contorted with a combination of rage and pain so intense, Leah felt it like a knife wound in her gut. Anje's voice fell to a dangerous whisper. "Tell that to the baby I miscarried two months ago." Leah felt her breakfast pushing its way back up her throat as she absorbed the full impact of her friend's words. Anje didn't seem to notice—or if she did, she didn't care. She plunged on, twisting the knife as she went. "Yeah, _friend. _You were an aunt for a few weeks. Congratulations."

Leah had to swallow three times before she was able to speak again, and even so she could only manage a thin squeak. "Does Robbie know?"

Anje stood. "You tell me, since you two are so close all of a sudden."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Me and _Robbie_?"

"Yes, you and…him. Who else? Tell me—did he pull the family loyalty card with you? Did he cry? Did he say he was _sorry_?" She met Leah's shocked gaze with a pitiless one of her own. "Come on, spill. I've got to know how he turned my best friend against me."

"Anje,_ what_ are you talking about?"

"Don't play innocent. You're defending him."

"I'm not defending him."

A shadow of doubt flickered across Anje's face. "Mertzmann said you're testifying."

"Yeah, I am. For _you._"

"What?" The shadow grew. "You're not a witness for the defendant?"

"No."

Anje felt for the edge of the bench with her fingers and sat heavily when she found it. "But…I don't understand." The anger had drained out of her.

"What's there to understand? You're my best friend. After what Robbie did to you, I don't owe him anything." She frowned as an image of that dark day, buried long ago beneath years of memories, rose sullenly to the surface of her mind's eye. Her brother had sat frozen, crouching with wide eyes on the stairs as their father _hurt_ her in that dark corner of the basement, that corner that Leah could neither remember clearly nor forget completely. She never knew why Robbie had come down there in the first place, but she thought she knew why he couldn't leave: fear.

She had tried to forget everything about that day, but the look on her brother's face was the one thing that refused to fade. It was fear that had kept him from interfering, fear that had kept him silent, fear that kept him from saying anything about the abuse. Leah was convinced of it. Afterward their father's death, neither talked about him at all if they could help it. Leah thought Robbie had forgotten what he had seen—until the morning that she had found Anje huddled and weeping on the floor of their bathroom. Fear, as she realized then, had broken her brother in strange ways. In piecing himself back together he had come to resemble their father in more ways that even he might have wished.

_That still doesn't make him innocent, _Leah told herself firmly. "It's the right thing to do," she concluded, watching the tears gathering in Anje's downcast eyes.

"I'm sorry, Leah," Anje whispered.

"Don't be."

"No, I mean I'm sorry that you've wasted your time." She looked up. "We're going to lose."

"What?"

"I don't blame you." She drew her sleeve under her nose and sniffed. "If you haven't been here, you couldn't know."

"Know what?"

She stifled a sob. "Mertzmann can't come up with any solid proof that it was forced except my word. Like I said, I don't think he trusts me. And the jury can tell. I saw it in their faces. He thinks—and now they think—I'm just the slut who panicked after and called rape."

Leah put a hand on her friend's shoulder. So she had been right. No jury would convict Robbie on Anje's word alone. Save Anje's testimony, all the physical evidence of the attack was either circumstantial or inconclusive. Which was why Leah knew she was doing the right thing—lightning bolts or no lightning bolts. "Mertzmann trusts _me_."

"Huh?"

"He trusts me. He told me so. The jury will take my word."

"What are you getting at?"

Leah took a deep breath. "Anje, I…I woke up early that morning. Earlier than you thought. I…saw what happened."

It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. "Leah…no…"

"Yes. I saw him attack you."

"But why didn't you come forward before?" Anje cried. The tears were now streaming freely down her face, dripping off her unsteady chin with every word. "I thought you had abandoned me!"

_Okay Leah, this is it. Channel Christine Helm. Justice is in the dock, Mertzmann is Sir Wilfrid Robarts and I am the witness for the prosecution. She has to believe me. Everybody has to believe me. _"My mom kept me away from the proceedings. But I finally got through to Mertzmann. He agreed to subpoena me. So…now I'm here."

That, at least, was part of the truth. She couldn't tell Anje the rest of the reason—that she wanted to be sure she would be at least a hundred miles away when the fallout of the bomb she was about to detonate settled over her family.

"Are you two ready?" The girls looked up. Mertzmann's sideburns were waiting above them. His first-rate leather shoes were apparently squeak-free and worth every penny, since neither had heard him approach. "Recess's over," he said.

Leah nodded and stood.

Anje followed suit, but slowly, her eyes still fixed on her friend.

"Yeah. We're ready," Leah said, finding as she spoke that the words where true. Her palms were dry, her heart was steady and her resolve unbroken. She would tell the jury how she had seen Robbie attack her friend that morning, how Anje's strangled cries had woken her and brought her, bleary-eyed but awake, to the door that Robbie had left cracked open. She would tell them of the fear and family pressure that had kept her from testifying until now, when she had at last worked up the courage to do the right thing. There was no reason they should not believe her. Her story would sway them, already moved as they were by the fact that she was willing to testify against her own brother. The law had demanded evidence, so Leah would provide evidence. Anje would have her justice. That was all that mattered.

No one would ever have to know that Leah had seen nothing at all that morning.

The doors swung shut behind them as the victim, the lawyer and the witness for the prosecution entered the courtroom. A hush fell over the gallery as they took their places. Leah straightened her blazer, patted her hair in place and prepared herself for perjury.

"All rise."

_Let justice serve._


End file.
